Once upon a time, this blog was going to be all about my pet bird, when I got one. But I never did get that bird. So, now this blog is about the beautiful, curious things that keep me in a near-constant state of happy distraction. Ironically, many people find these writings when they wonder what "peristerophobia" means. It's a fear of pigeons. I've made a bird blog after all.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Bounded waters.

Remember the time we drove to Grand Lake and even though I couldn't swim for very long times yet, I was still pretty good for my age and got to paddle in the greeny water near the dock? Remember how we went to Keuka and you got the sewing machine for your thirtieth birthday and you took the picture of him in his fisherman's cap and his blue tank top, holding me (in the striped bathing suit and the Flintstones sunglasses) on one hip, with the Super 8 in the other hand? Remember how you were so little and sunburned so fast that you spent most of the vacation indoors or under cover or asleep in your green and white sunhat? Remember how we used to drive along Lake St. Clair and you'd talk about those early dates, the times you forgot to check the time and stayed out until 3 a.m.?

Remember when we went to Ambleside and you showed me how to skip stones when we were falling in love? Remember when we waded into Cayuga years later, knee deep, and made the stones go farther? Remember when we drove out to Ontario on that cold, windy day and watched the sunset and took pictures of our shadows? Remember how we saw the moon rise and we had to be careful not to slip on the ice-glazed pier, and then we had the best Indian food I've ever eaten? Remember when I picked you both up on the first hot day of the spring and we got ice cream and drove up the lake and ate it while we skipped stones some more?

Remember when we drove to Chimney Bluffs and at first we couldn't find the bluffs because we parked in the wrong parking lot, but then we hiked through those sodden woods and squelchy fields until suddenly there they were, in all their weird majesty? Remember how we picked up stones later, until we realized that I was picking up exactly the same kinds of stones, over and over, and that we needed to go back to the city and clean ourselves up for dinner anyway?

Remember when we sat in the living room of that house and read books and just watched the rain fall, day after day? Remember how I went outside and tried, again and again, to take a picture, just one, just of the swell and the fall and the reflection and the opacity, that would let me bring it all to Ohio?

Remember how you got us tickets for the steam launch and we steamed around the water, with the rain falling so that in the pictures, we're all bundled almost beyond recognition? Remember how we started at the tip of one lake and hiked down to the next one, and we had to run and run to get down the hills?

Remember when we blew that champagne cork out into the water, and you ran back in and swam out to get it? Remember how we spent most of the afternoon on that float, posing for the pictures he took from shore? Remember how cold the water was, and how dark, and how deep, so deep that we couldn't touch the bottom even close to shore? Remember trying to synchronize swim? Remember how we went back a couple of weeks later and sat by that same lake and pretended we would read but instead sat around talking about love and sex? Remember how we danced on the grass and then on that concrete, roofless veranda? Remember how sunburned I got?

Remember how they said Ruskin's family's china was all found in the lake and pieced back together to be displayed? Remember how you'd already found pieces of blue-and-white on the opposite shore earlier, waiting alone for the ferry to arrive, hoping you'd done the signal correctly and they wouldn't leave you standing there for another hour? Remember how you drank in the waters, with every turn of the bus through the district on the way back to the train, because now you live land-locked? Remember how you went to North Point and skipped and skipped and skipped when he wouldn't visit, month after month, and how you skipped and skipped and skipped when the writing wouldn't work, day after day, and how you skipped and skipped and skipped when you just couldn't bear to keep driving north to a place that wasn't home, month after month? Remember how you skipped, and skipped, and skipped?source for today's image: a cyclist's blog

Damn! I knew I got that wrong. I will fix it. I have such a clear visual memory of even where I was when you were opening it (you were in the kitchen space; I was in the living room; there was a picture window or breakfast bar or something instead of a wall between the two spaces) and of course the red plastic case is emblazoned on my brain. But I had a feeling I was probably getting the year wrong. If it's any consolation, I always get your age wrong now, by a couple of years in the other direction. And I was, well, four on your thirtieth, so really I'd like some props for remembering this at all. ;)

About Me

Annie Dillard could have been writing about me when she said (of herself), "I like the slants of light; I'm a collector." Or Willem de Kooning: "I'm like a slipping glimpser." And don't forget Brenda Ueland: "I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten--happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another." But the Beastie Boys might have said it best: "When it comes to panache, I can't be beat." There's a reason I wear a ring that says Badass.